Tag Archives: TISA imposed on the entire world

TPA, TPP, TTIP — and now TiSA! Much of the debate over current trade policy and the proposed global governance structures that would emanate from it have revolved around this ever-increasing list of alphabet-soup measures. Although not nearly as well-known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) should not be overlooked. Equally potent and potentially even more debilitating to our nation’s independence and domestic economy than the TPP and TTIP, the proposed TiSA currently being negotiated would be imposed on the entire world, not just a particular region.

The TiSA would give the UN’s World Trade Organization (WTO) unprecedented control of the service sector, including jobs in banking, finance, courier and postal services, delivery and freight services, energy distribution, health care, insurance, maritime, professional services, legal services, licensing, real estate, telecommunications, transportation, tourism, and much more. According to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, such services “account for three-quarters of U.S. GDP and 4 out of 5 jobs in the United States.”

As for its stated purpose, the Office of U.S. Trade Representative’s website declares: “TiSA will support the development of strong, transparent, and effective regulatory policies, which are so important to enabling international commerce.”

Despite TiSA’s purported intentions aimed at “transparent” regulatory policies and then-presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama’s promise to run the “most transparent” administration in history, the official TiSA text remains anything but transparent, as it is shrouded in secrecy and will likely remain so for some time, even after its possible passage.

Following WikiLeaks’ release of its first batch of classified TiSA documents in 2014, William F. Jasper reported in “TISA, Yet Another Secret ‘Trade’ Threat” (posted at TheNewAmerican.com on October 3, 2014):

The very first page of the draft text states: “Declassify on: Five years from entry into force of the TISA agreement or, if no agreement enters into force, five years from the close of the negotiations.”

Moreover, it states: “This document must be protected from unauthorized disclosure…. It must be stored in a locked or secured building, room, or container.” Members of the U.S. Congress are not allowed to see the secret text; it will be presented to them, finally, in a high-pressure, no-debate vote, following a massive lobbying effort by the usual crony corporatists from the financial, insurance, and information technology sectors.

In addition to its level of concealment, the TiSA, as alluded to earlier, would further abrogate U.S. sovereignty to the WTO. In fact, the WTO’s headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, was the site of TiSA’s secretive four-day negotiations on September 22-25, 2014. In a more recent article, “TISA Leaks: Another Secret Obama Trade Deal, More Reasons to Stop ‘Fast Track,'” posted at TheNewAmerican.com on June 5, 2015, William F. Jasper writes, “U.S. courts, or tribunals created under TiSA, or World Trade Organization (WTO) tribunals are virtually certain to use TiSA — as they have already done using NAFTA — to rule that U.S. laws are illegal and must be changed.”

TiSA courts, like those created under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), would override and supersede our domestic U.S. state and federal courts, thereby overturning legislation in favor of foreign corporations from any one of the TiSA participatory nations.

Currently, TiSA is being negotiated by the United States, the European Union, and 23 other nations, including Turkey, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Pakistan, Taiwan, and Israel (parties to TiSA agreement shown in blue on map on left). Should Congress approve the TiSA, there is no known guarantee that additional countries such as APEC member-states Communist China and Russia would not also become part of TiSA, without the consent of Congress.

Proponents claim that TiSA would help American businesses sell services overseas. Yet it is much more probable that TiSA would help foreign businesses sell services in the United States. But promising the opposite of what we should expect based on the agreements themselves is nothing new for the globalists. Recall that they deceptively “sold” (and continue to “sell”) “free trade” agreements on the basis that they would create American jobs and prosperity, but that the agreements delivered the opposite.

TiSA assistance to facilitate foreign businesses to sell their services in the U.S. would be twofold: (1) TiSA’s proposed international regulatory scheme would enable foreign services businesses to compete more effectively against American services businesses; and (2) TiSA’s new regulatory landscape would more easily facilitate the outsourcing of American services jobs overseas.

Americans in services jobs that require occupational licensing would likely be hard hit by TiSA’s changes in the regulatory environment. Services professions requiring occupational licensing include physicians, lawyers, teachers, plumbers, electricians, real estate agents, insurance agents, audiologists, architects, barbers, certified public accountants, professional engineers, and more. According to a recent article, dated January 27, 2015, published by the Brookings Institution, occupational licensing “has spread to cover around 30 percent of the U.S. workforce, up from just 5 percent in the 1950s.”

With so much at stake, ranging from jobs to most importantly our national sovereignty and independence, it is imperative that you call and email your U.S. senators and representative and encourage them to vote against any legislation that advances TiSA.

Please take the following actions:

Phone your representative (202-225-3121) and senators (202-224-3121) and tell them to vote NO on any legislation that advances passage of the TiSA.